Washburn University’s Benton Hall was the latest host to an elevator failure Sep. 6, that left senior Jasper Shrake stuck on the third floor of the building.

“The university as far as I know did respond how they should have,” Shrake said. “I guess what I don’t understand is why they don’t have someone on staff with experience working on elevators. It makes issues incredibly inefficient.”

Shrake, who relies on the elevators on campus to get to some classes and areas of campus due to a disability, has experienced prior incidents where an elevator or lift failure has prevented him from entering or leaving a building.

“It seems like elevators are constantly breaking and the University’s approach to remedy these issues tends to be pretty reactive,” Shrake said.

Even then, those reactive measures seem to fall short at times.

“The White Concert Hall lift has been broken for a long time and the risers that are transported by that lift are blocking access points,” Shrake said.

We at the Washburn Review have penned several articles calling for a better response to elevator problems. In the past, we identified a very clear problem with the hydraulic pump technology used in the elevators of the older buildings and a preventative solution for this would be to update the elevators to use newer cable technology seen in the LLC and Lincoln elevators.

University officials have yet to comment on the possibility of renovations to these elevators, though we at the Washburn Review are in full support of renovations if it means our disabled students will no longer have to worry about a potential malfunction.

Sep. 7, Shrake will be in attendance at the WSGA meeting to discuss the continued elevator failures plaguing the campus. He has expressed high hopes for the meeting tonight.

“I’m hoping that WSGA could open dialogue with Washburn University in order for them to decide to assess how effective their methods have been with prevention of accessibility issues,” Shrake said. “I really just would like them to rethink the way they are solving [this].”

We stand with Shrake and all disabled students on campus who desire a better daily experience at Washburn, and we have high hopes for his meeting with WSGA.

As we have previously stated, preventative measures are always better than reactive and with a maintenance budget of over $8 million according to the Washburn Board of Regent’s September 2015 general fund statement, we are more than capable of ending this elevator crisis.